Something More Than Hope/Something More Than Everything: Surviving Despite the Odds, Thriving Because of Them

Written in the spirit of Norman Cousins' "Anatomy of an Illness" and Jill Bolte Taylor's "My Stroke of Insight", this book will forever change your thinking about the depth of our capacity to heal and heal one another. When Diana Lindsay couldn't blow out the candles on her birthday cake, she never imagined that it was because of stage IV lung cancer. Given a prognosis of just three to six months to live, she also never imagined that eight years later she and her husband would be sharing their highly improbable and unexpectedly joyful story of how they returned her to complete health. In 2006, the odds of Diana living long enough to see her newborn granddaughter enter kindergarten were one in a hundred. "How do I make it into the 1% Club?" she asks herself and steps into an assumption-challenging alternate future with her husband Kelly. Recognizing she will have to be willing to try what 99% wouldn't, Diana relentlessly pursues the latest medical technologies and opens her mind to a range of integrative therapies, including medical Qigong and Reiki. But it is her creativity with the ancient protocols of love, joy, and wonder---and how she and Kelly turn them into a Love-In, a Gratitude Tour, and a 48-state road trip in a Prius with a queen-size mattress in the back---that will surprise and delight you. This is not cancer-as-you-know-it. Despite the copious research Diana clearly presents, she recognizes that the longer the odds of survival, the shorter the medical evidence on which to base decisions. So she learns to "Skype" her own cells, and with astonishing clarity and prescience they guide her through medical and life decisions that bring her to much more than health. With unwavering love and often humorous storytelling, Kelly asks his own questions as Diana's primary caretender: "What do I do now? What can I do now? Can I win a bare-knuckles fight with my results-oriented mind to embrace the unknown? Can I cross the bridge to Woo-Woo without burning it?" Cross it he does, even learning to exhort his own cells when he too is diagnosed with cancer years later. This two-in-one book, combining both the patient and caretender perspectives, is a story of spirit and creativity. It offers any of us the encouragement to take advantage of something more than hope in the face of life crisis as well as the possibility of giving up---and astonishingly getting back---something more than everything. Advance Praise "A remarkable story that deserves to be told and re-told." --Elizabeth George, New York Times best-selling author "Diana and Kelly Lindsay have written a remarkable account of Diana's exceptional recovery from stage 4 lung cancer. They faced daunting odds with fierce intentionality and a wise integration of conventional and integrative therapies. Above all, they understand the healing power of love. A beautiful story, well told."--Michael Lerner, President and Founder, Commonweal, author of Choices in Healing "Diana and Kelly's moving journeys in the face of cancer affirm that miracles are made - not with blueprints or instruction manuals, but with courage, intuition, intelligence and abiding love. The honesty, humor and insights embedded in each chapter are unique to them as patient and caretaker, wife and husband, yet universal in their depiction of the human heart as it opens and closes and opens again to the onslaught of life in all its rawness and beauty. For those with a life-threatening illness and their loved ones, this book is like a dear friend at your side, reminding you that you are not alone, whatever your path may be."--Elise Miller, Med, Director, Collaborative on Health and the Environment